Page 22 of Scorched By Fate

She didn’t respond immediately. Her gaze flicked toward the open sky behind me, her hands still gripping the edge of my worn leathers like she was weighing every possible escape plan.

“Right,” she said finally, though the edge of her voice gave away her own internal battle. “Practical.”

Stars help me.

That close, every sense I had was on fire—her breath warm against my throat, the heat of her skin radiating through the armor and scales separating us. My claws itched for purchase they couldn’t take, my wings shifting instinctively to tighten around her, shielding her fully within their span as the wind curled tighter around us.

“Ready?” I asked, my voice softened by a restraint that grated against everything primal inside me.

She nodded once, her grip tightening. “Don’t drop me.”

The faintest twitch curled at the corner of my lips—a bitter, aching smile rising to fight the storm raging beneath the rest of me. "Not a chance."

NINE

SELENE

The wind hammered at my face, sending a wild snarl through my hair and a hot spike of terror through my stomach. My arms tightened around Vyne’s neck—not because I didn’t trust him, but because trust wasn’t about to overrule every screaming survival instinct raging in my chest.

The ground plummeted away beneath us like it hated me personally, and for one long, dizzying second, I swallowed the sharp, indignant protest of a species that had never been meant to leave the ground.

Vyne’s hold didn’t falter. One arm braced across my back, the other curved beneath my thighs, anchoring me against the unshakeable heat and strength of him as his wings unfolded and snapped open with merciless precision. The sheer size of them—dark, rippling planes of muscle and membrane stretching impossibly wide—made the clipped edge of awe lurking beneath my anxiety harder to shove down than I liked.

I was trying not to think about the tail wrapped around my legs. Judging from the blushes I’d seen from both Terra and Orla, Drakarn could be wickedly precise with their tails.

Volcaryth unfurled beneath us, a hellscape alive with fire and stone and smoke. Crimson sands twisted into blackened cliffs, their jagged spines punctuated by menacing veins of rivers that glowed molten-bright against the scorched ground. Steam hissed from unseen rifts below, curling up into the shimmering waves of heat that distorted everything into a feverish haze. The air cut sharp and sour in my throat, tinged with sulfur so thick it clung to the back of my tongue no matter how carefully I breathed.

It was hell. And somehow … it was beautiful.

I glanced down, curiosity overriding my better judgement for half a second. Mistake. My stomach flipped violently as I registered how far we already were from the tunnels of Scalvaris. The cliffs were tiny teeth now, sharp and impossibly far away. I squeezed my eyes shut before the lurch in my stomach could claw its way up to my throat.

“You sure you’ve got me?” The words escaped before I could think about stopping them. I tried to make the question sound teasing, but it came out tighter than I liked.

Vyne’s voice cut through the chaotic wind, rough around the edges but maddeningly calm. His tone held no sense of strain despite the sheer size and weight of me that he carried as easily as breathing. “Do you think I’d bring you this far just to drop you?”

It was the dry precision in his words—not teasing, but not quite cutting—that had me snorting despite myself. “No.”

His wings adjusted, catching a rising thermal draft with an expert, calculated shift that had the cruel audacity to make me feel momentarily weightless.

Without meaning to, I was noticing things about him again. Details I didn’t want to focus on, like the ripple of his muscles beneath my legs and the press of heat through the smooth hardness of his scaled skin where it touched mine. Even hisscent beneath the sulfuric sting of Volcaryth was distractingly, infuriatingly distinct—something rich and scorched and impossible to name.

It was too much. Too close.

My jaw clenched against the strange coil of unease threading low in me, and I resettled my grip on him like that would do something. His heat washed over me, unrelenting even against the hot currents of air buffeting us higher.

“You can relax,” he said. His voice dipped into something low and firm. “You’re safer in my arms than you would be on the ground.”

“Tell that to gravity,” I retorted, though not even sarcasm could steady my voice.

His wings snapped outward in a subtle tilt that sent us gliding on a slower descent now, the currents catching waves to lift us against the searing sky. “Humans need to adapt if they want to survive here,” he replied, the blunt, matter-of-fact cadence of his words landing heavier than they needed to.

I aimed a sharp glance upward at him, my lips twitching despite myself. “Wow. Thanks for that astute insight.”

He didn’t respond. But there was something almost deliberate in the flicker of his wings again as he settled further into the air current, arms shifting at my waist like the motion was every bit as natural to him as breathing.

By the time his wings cut into a sharper angle upward again, I could feel the strength in his frame flexing with every shift of the flight. It was natural, fluid in a way that couldn’t quite be called effort. His focus was sharp and unnerving, but there was never hesitation. Not in the way he moved. Not in the way he latched his hand tighter at the closest pull of hot wind, his claws brushing just barely against my skin.

The world blurred below, marked by endless fractured spines of rock glowing faint with the veins of lava that scoured thesurface. The heat pushed harder and harder against my body with every fucking mile. And I hated it—hated the way I could feel the rhythm of his wings aligning quietly with the pounding pulse in my ears, hated the strange steadiness it offered when my instincts wanted chaos.

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